CXXII
Du the Ren thing
WARNING
SLIDING CHEESE ZONE
The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Dance, and the Lord of the Flies walk into a bar…
All-time bestseller:
THE GREAT BIG BOOK OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS
Friend of a bartender
The shock of denude
A Song for Mockupations
“I look at a brand on a global perspective…in terms of scalability…flexibility for localization…put a lot of evergreen content in…spa beauty at home…constant stream of news they’re pushing out…I’m trying, sort of, to unify the team…they dotted lined it to me…I try to make them feel part of a global PR team…”
A woman, perhaps in her early thirties sitting at the table to your right, in response to a question about what she does, from her female “journalist” breakfast companion. Tarallucci e vino, 12/10/15.
ELECTION 2016: Trump’s Lead Solidifies in Poll, but Many Are Nervous
[NYT, 12/10/15, A1:1]
Australia, or Scotland (or wherever) men are men and sheep are nervous
The chakras of the nude
Greece emerges as the primary gatekeeper for refugees heading toward Germany.
“Many of the men, women and children camped along the Greece-Macedonia border are hoping that Ms. Merkel will speak up for them. ‘They ask all the time, has Angela said anything?’ [said the transit camp’s food distribution manager.]
“The process of screening migrants [war refugees vs. job-seekers] by nationality has left thousands trapped along the way with as many as 6,000 living at times in the mud along this border, their fury bubbling over almost daily with protests and efforts to tear down the new fence, which now stretches nearly 40 miles and sparkles in the sun…”
“Many of those now being shuttled back from the border to Athens are being housed in former Olympic stadiums, which have been abandoned for years…” [Suzanne Daley, “Triage of Migrants Strands Thousands in Greece.” NYT, Dec. 10, 2015. A6:2]
Victims of literacy
The free mock it
A man’s home is his scaffold
It’s a lung story, let me expleen it to you…
Over the PA at Whole Foods: A man named Frodo to the proto sixth floor…
What? There – he said it again: A man named Frodo to the proto sixth floor…
I was a kard-karrying Kardashian for the FBI
Apocryphal, yet… when Sparta invaded Attica in 446 BC, Pericles personally bribed the Spartan king sixty thousand drachmas to withdraw, and entered the amount in his accounts as having been spent for “essential purposes.”
“New Chapter In the History of U.S. Dread”
by Jason Horowitz
The handsome Washington townhouse where Wayne Hickory practices orthodontics is a landmark of terrorism in America.
In 1919, an anarchist exploded a bomb at what was then the home of the attorney general. The failed assassination set of a wave of violent raids on radicals, Communists and leftists, and the deportation without due process of hundreds of innocent European immigrants – a high point of hysteria in an era known as the first Red Scare.
“Maybe there is something to learn from history,” Dr. Hickory said in a sitting room that now contains advertising for invisible braces. But asked abut Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the United States, Dr. Hickory said that, as implausible as it was, the proposal had prompted a necessary discussion about whether travelers from countries fraught with Islamic extremism should receive increased scrutiny. “Perhaps,” he said, “the line needs to be drawn a little bit more severely.”
An existential fear of foreign infiltration, unfamiliar minorities and terrorist attacks is not a new feeling in America. Neither is the nativist, if at times innovative language that Mr. Trump has mastered on his way to leading the Republican presidential primary race… [NYT, Dec. 12, 2015. A1: 5]
Ah, but Mr. Trump must yield first place to the Times in the innovative language department… for who can top them? The article quoted above is tagged “The U.S. Campaign” and it says volumes about Gray Lady’s economy of language, and much else besides, that the word “Presidential” makes no appearance in the sentence.
Runaway bestseller: I’m AOK, you’re like sort of OK…
Are Santa’s elves gnomosexual?
I was a strange, enchanted boy for the FBI
4 Olds of the Cultural Revolution:
Old ideas
Old culture
Old customs
Old habits
The hole is greater
Does “fantasy” or satire, such as Lysistrata serve as alibi for the deadly earnest?
Homeless Unveil Plan for Mayor
Write with your body
What is its language?
Bessemer mucho, sang Andrew Carnegie
Wide people’s problems
Pity the sheep who must rely on woolfare!
Vive la divergence!
And still the Times persists, against an overwhelming tide of external incoherence, and the by-now sheer impossibility of any self-reflection, in crafting out of the world’s tsuris, a steady stream of authoritative (st)utterance:
BUDAPEST – Three months after throngs of migrants turned the Keleti station in Budapest into a squalid symbol of Europe’s disarray, the grand 19th century rail terminus has taken on a no less divisive role in a mounting debate over links between terrorism and the chaotic influx of people fleeing war and poverty in the Muslim world. [“Hungarian Link to Paris Attack Roils Country’s Debate Over Migrants,” Andrew Higgins, NYT, 12/19/15, A4:1]
OPERATING BASE FENTY, Afghanistan – The Islamic State is establishing “little nests” in Afghanistan, adding to the complex array of threats confronting Afghan forces and
their international partners as they try to reverse a serious decline in security, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Friday… [“Islamic State Building ‘Nests’ in Afghanistan, U.S. Says,” Michael R. Gordon, NYT, 12/19/15, A9:3]
Are you now or have you ever been a pheasant plucker?
If you can’t hierarchy, fire-archy
We are all born twins, but one of us dies
Squalid
Debate
Complex
Disarray
Array
Chaotic
Fleeing
Mounting
Confronting
Divisive
Reverse
Decline
Influx
Little
Threats
Nests
All of our blinds have windows
And insensible to all dawns, rosy-fingered or otherwise, as the solstice itself approaches, the logos waterboards itself, confessing to that which it cannot possibly know:
“After the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, Mr. Sanders’s progressive political message seems lost in a fog of fear.” [“Sanders Falls Behind in Race Centered on Security.” NYT online front page, 12/20/15]
“The money poured in by the millions, then by the hundreds of millions, and finally by the billions. Over weak coffee in a conference room in Midtown Manhattan last year, a half dozen Puerto Rican officials exhaled: Their cash-starved island had persuaded some of the country’s biggest hedge funds to lend them more than $3 billion to keep the government afloat.” [“P.R.’s Pricey Struggle: Wealthy Investors Squeeze a Cash-Starved Island,” Jonathan Mahler and Nicholas Confessore, NYT, 12/20/15. A1:3]
Is translucent an accurate word for a sexually reassigned person who’s attained spiritual awakening?
Can a Hasid of profound compassion be called a Bodhisatmar?
And, as though some strange, corrupt and demented Homer-Whitman mashup were disgorging its “soul” upon the newsprint page, the Song of the Times heaves on:
“THE APPRAISAL – Flip through a high-end magazine right now and one will see page after page of ads for new luxury developments in New York, many of them for towers on Billionaire Row, the area between the southern end of Central Park and 56th Street, that push above the clouds and the madness of the city.” [“As a New High Society Climbs in Manhattan, It’s a Race to the Top,” Matt A.V. Chaban, New York Times, 12/22/15, A1:1]
Look inside the Times A-section [right now!] and one finds a full page ad for “TAKE FLIGHT,” a “new virtual reality” film by the NYT that promises to “take you high into the night sky to witness a constellation of Hollywood’s brightest stars in a tribute to its grandest illusion.”
Headline on a vast earth-slide in Shenzhen: “The City Where China’s Transition Began: once a fishing community, now an industrial megacity.”
“Described by China’s officials as a miracle, Shenzhen has some of China’s biggest skyscrapers and shopping malls with new subway and other construction proceeding so quickly that there is no room to put all the excavation waste…”
Then, a series of three thumbnail photos of the construction debris accumulating in the hills above the city, captioned:
“November. 2013: Two years ago, a quarry occupied the area of the slide.”
“November, 2014: A man-made hill grew as dump trucks piled dirt and construction debris into the former quarry.”
“December, 2015: Debris gave way, burying or toppling 33 buildings as it slid down the mountain.” [“City Embodying China’s Growth Falls Risk to It with Landslide of Debris,” NYT, 12/22/15, A1:6.
“We’re not forecasters, so any building that’s not built yet wouldn’t be a factor for us,” explained Michael Stern, founder and managing director of JDS Development which is building 111 West 57th Street [1,428 feet]. “I actually really like 432 [Park Avenue; 1,369 feet],” he added. “It makes my building look less intimidating.” [Op. cit. “As a New High Society Climbs”]
Nearly buried in the debris of the A-section: “Penthouse for President of N.Y.U. Gets A Costly Upgrade.” Said penthouse’s “rooftop terrace overlooks Washington Square and, to the south, the financial district skyline.”
As on the fiery lightning followeth the thunder,
As from the cloudrack comes the driving hail and snow,
From men of power comes a city’s ruin; so it falls under
A despot – by their folly its folk to bondage go.
Once a man is exalted, he grows hard to restrain.
Already the time is on ye to see that issue plain.
Attributed to Solon, early 6th century B.C.
…Towers that push above the madness of the city.
But are not those towers the madness of the city?
…Its rooftop terrace overlooks Washington Square and, to the south, the financial district skyline.
Yes, it can overlook the Square. But how can it overlook those much taller buildings toward the south? Is this a problem of physics, or one of a missing verb?
…Flip through a high-end magazine right now and one will see…
But if one does not flip right now, will one not see?
Deep movement, superficial stillness.
Superficial movement, deep stillness.
One could also say “visible” and “invisible.”
The capacity for stabbing or being stabbed is not the same thing as stability.
Welcome to a paralol universe 
Kafka say wow
Or fight…
